Will Trump's Postal Service Seize This Mail Bag?

Today's presenting sponsor is Simply Safe Home Security. Back to school, just turn your house from full to empty for seven hours a day. That's a pattern anyone can spot. Simply safe AI cameras and live agents are watching your perimeter while you're out, not waiting for an alarm to go off inside. Unlike traditional security systems that only alert you after break-ins are underway, Simply Safe is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside. Smart AI powered outdoor cameras detect suspicious activity at the perimeter and alert live US-based agents to step in. Simply Safe's agents assess the threat intervened through the outdoor camera to scare off trespassers and call for 911 dispatch. Here are some of our CEO's favorite features. Installation was quick and the system was up and running in no time. The app is easy to use. She can arm or disarm the system and check the cameras all from her phone. All of the components have worked smoothly since day one. The family now has total peace of mind knowing they are protected by Simply Safe. Right now, you can get 50% off a new Simply Safe system. Go to SimplySafe.com/Cricket. That's SimplySafe.com/Cricket for 50% off. And when you order, please write in Podsave America and how did you hear about a survey to let them know we sent you out. Don't forget, there's no Safe, like SimplySafe. Welcome to Podsave America. I'm John Fefer. I'm John Loveett. Time to be torn. I'm Dan Feifer. Happy Labor Day, everyone. We took Monday off but wanted to give you a pod because we love you. Which is why we're going to try to answer all of your burning questions about the midterms, 2028, and Dan's skincare routine. Dan, what are we doing? What's our peptide situation? Peptides. No peptides. No peptides. Is that skincare related? No, that's not skincare related. Oh boy. Guys, we'll talk about this. I don't know what a peptide is. I feel like it could be anything. Oh, I need to know what it is now to put it on my skin every day. Well, it's like we're in L.A. We're in L.A. Where I thought you injected them. These are, there's, there's, there's topical peptides, but Dan's in San Francisco where all the life hackers are. What's the guy's name? Brian Johnson. One is measuring his boner. I think he's pivot off life. Do you have any just being fit now? I say. Uh-huh. It's probably better for him. Great. Anyway. Great. We'll, we'll even answer questions. You didn't ask. We're good. Great. That's part of it. Uh-huh. And then I have to re-answer some questions. Uh-shanequa-McClendon. Our fearless leader, Votes Av America, will talk through the best ways to volunteer to help take back the house and send it now that we are in the final midterm sprint. Can you believe it? Uh-uh. All right. You guys ready to answer some questions? Anyone can say yes. No. Yes. No. No. First one comes from Vanessa on Facebook. Is there anyone that can stop this orange piece of shit? Three exclamation points. Vanessa from Facebook. I just thought I'd put that one first because that's just a tenor of the questions we get from Facebook. Iran's doing a pretty good job. Yeah. So far. I think the answer is no. I think I, um, heart disease has always got a shot. Uh-huh. Yeah. All right. The father time will get there eventually. Sort of, you know, the hardness of the veins. Yeah. Sort of got some salt in the end. Anyway. Uh-uh. You know, it's 2026, almost 2027. So pretty soon we won't be asking that question. Mm-hmm. Hopefully. You think. Then what happens? Well, then we'll, we get, we get real jobs. Yeah. Probably. All right. Subscriber Katzo. One of our subscribers. What are going to be the main things you're hoping to learn or have tested in the midterms as we head into 2028? This is a great, great question. Great question. Tommy, what do you think? Uh, I think there's a bunch of things that we're all kind of watching for. For example, uh, data centers. It's a thing people are talking about. It seems to be really politically salient. What? No, it's about data centers. I think people are talking about it. That's right. That's what he said. It's accurate. It's a real like hot button issue politics, and I think we'll find out if it's a thing people are voting. Yeah. I think we'll find out if there's a progressive penalty, and if so, how much, whether, you know, kind of how DSA candidates or left candidates do against the national average. And then everyone will look at those numbers and then use them to confirm their priors going into the 2028 primary. Uh, we'll figure out about online scandals, uh, populism versus moderation, right? We have to populate something like Rob Sand out in Iowa, more of a moderate. Yeah. It's a lot of interesting things. We learned from elections, I think. Dan, what are you looking for? I think Tommy hits on the real problem, which is this is a election that we hope is taking place in a democratic wave. A lot of people who may not win in other years could win this year that will then be used to suggest that everything that they did is right. As, as we know, it's obviously easier to learn from the elections you lose in the ones you win, although that's never the outcome you really want. I'm interested in some more granular nerdy stuff about like testing new relational organizing strategies, field strategies, or where there's a lot of talk about Democrats out there experimenting with new ways of communicating new ways of organizing and having ways to measure the efficacy of that, to see if it actually worked in move numbers. Love it. You got any? Yeah. I mean, I think you'll hit on it. There's been more discussion about ending the Senate than why Democrats can't compete in rural areas. And I do think we'll learn about whether a candidate that is, you know, center left, but not running as a Democrat. Like, what does that teach us about, you know, competing, like, what's going to happen with Dan Osborne? How does that look versus what happens in Iowa? Like, I'm interested in that. And where sort of the Democratic brand stands at the end of this. You guys hit most of the ones on my list, but I have how close DEMs will be to try, to a trifecta if we win the White House in 2028, like, what could a, what's the upper limit on a possible majority? What's that looking like? And, and just as part of that, how, like, how important is John Federman? Right. And how much does he become the main character of our politics for a while? Yeah. Turn out, level of enthusiasm among DEMs, which demographic groups swung back to Democrats since 2024, if any, hopefully, very interested to see what happens in Texas, state of blue Texas, to Tommy's point about if there are progressive penalty, just like Abdul's performance in Michigan, I think is key. Like, does he, you know, if he wins, does he win by the same amount that other Michigan Democrats do or other national Democrats do or not? Also, if there are any new, any, any states that maybe are not thought of as competitive tough states now, or competitive swing states now, but maybe long shots worth investing in for the 2028 campaigns, like if we suddenly pull out a win in Iowa or Alaska, oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. So I'm kind of looking at that. And then just on the Republican side, Trump's approval in the exits, Republican drop-off from 22, the last midterm, and then, you know, if there are Republican candidates who surprise us and either do better than expected or outright win competitive seats, like, what's their formula? What do they look like? Which are we worried about for 2028? It will also be funny to see how much of Trump's super PAC money he spends. He has what? 400 million. I think he's hilarious. He spent just zero dollars. Yeah. That's a fun one to look for. The thing that you mentioned, John, that's interesting is what's, like, elections like this can tell us what are the next states to come under the presidential map, because in 2006, we won Senate races in Virginia and Indiana, which we would then go ahead and win in 2008. So smart. It's, this will be really interesting to watch. Subscriber, shibbles, and bits. I hate it. Very good. A handful of candidates in statewide races, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, have refused to debate their opponents. Do you think the importance of the election debate is waning? Dan, start with you. This is a bit of a paradox, but I think the penalty for skipping debates has been greatly diminished as the power of the traditional media to hold candidates accountable has drained. But the opportunity costs for not doing debates has gone way up, because it's so hard to break through to have any event you do, any moment in a campaign that can actually break outside of the political media bubble, and debates are the best opportunity to do that. So you can definitely get away with it, like people can dress and check in suits and say you don't want a debate and that won't, you won't be haunted in the way you have before, but you're leaving a lot of opportunity on the table if you don't debate. Anyone disagree or have anything else to add? I mean, the argument for, it was a primary, but the argument for debates not mattering at all is that Darlene Graham won, because she gave one of the worst debate answers I've ever heard, which was allow me to flip open my notepad, I don't know the foreign policy. Katie Hobbs skipped all those debates. Remember, that was like she was dogged for a while, wasn't there an issue of Katie Hobbs? Remember, and Katie Hobbs was dodging debates and we were like, "Why is she not debating?" And it worked. And for Darlene Graham won, it's interesting because it's counterfactual, like would she have won by more if she hadn't just absolutely faceplanned in the debate, because you did win by a fairly small margin in a state that, you know, in a very Republican state with Trump's endorsement. Right. You have to assume she was declining, and in effect, if he had had another week, would he have been able to kind of do it? Of that list, I find it, Texas is the most interesting to me, because South Carolina in Tennessee, and South Carolina, you can argue, Darlene Graham is, you know, pulling ahead of any Andrews, and that's why she's not debating the same thing with Tennessee. But Texas, like pretty tied race, if you're not telling Rico a little ahead, and the idea that Paxton is just not going to debate, do you think that laughs? Have you seen him speak? I know, but like, if Ken Paxton was my best friend, I'd be like, "Do not debate." Right. You're the strategist. You're thinking, "Hug, given my candidates' record, rap sheet, and face, maybe we shouldn't do this." Yeah. Look, your public acts and private acts are disgusting. You're terrible at defending them. You're not particularly smart. You're not charming. Just wild to get away with it and erase that big and that close, you know. All right, Megan from Twitter asks, "How does the party message to voters that even if Democrats went back to the House and the Senate, change will be very incremental until we have a Demtrifecta come 2029 and still keep people engaged and hopeful." Love it. Take it away. Look, we just, you know, tell people the truth and everybody will have a kind of reasonable discussion about it online and understand the limits of Democratic power and not resort to assumptions around DNC being co-opted by billionaires, being the reason we've not achieved any of our goals and that you say, "Oh, if Democrats are so good, why don't we have Medicare for all when they control the Congress and I try to do the thing we'll have for a while?" Well, I think we have to, I think that the fight over Hakeem Jeffries and meeting, which Eric Kushner was revealing, not because I found the debate particularly interesting about that specific meeting, but because of what it says about people's low expectations of Hakeem Jeffries, right? The problem in that moment was not that he had a meeting, the problem was that people don't trust him to have a set of goals, a resolve, like a clearer kind of moral compass that's guiding his strategy. And so we have these two years and I think sometimes it gets boiled down to, like, will you fight? Are you a fighter? Are you willing to fight, right? But understanding what the Democratic goals are when they're in the minority, what are the investigations they're going to launch? What are the message bills they're going to pass and try to shove down Trump's throat or if we don't win this Senate kind of lock in the Senate, right? Like, those are the places where one lesson over the last several years is that you can't just have a message, you can't just have even a policy, you have to pick fights and have big controversies that underscore the difference. And to me, if we can do that successfully over the next two years while Democratic candidates are campaigning and competing to develop the platform for the presidential race, I think that puts you in a position to say, if you go with us, this is the future that you can have. Don't we think voters realize that Trump is still president and there's not going to be any change? I feel like it's like a harm avoidance message to the midterms, and then 2028, if we win, that's when the like, you got to deliver a problem gets really hard. Yeah. I certainly would hope so. I hope so. I hope so. That's what I've been thinking. And look, for less engaged voters, maybe it's like an important message for all the candidates to deliver. So it's not to raise expectations, but yeah, like, we're not passing anything. But the issue is not, right, we're not passing anything, but the question is, like, who will own the failure over the next two years, right? And there will be budget bills that like, like, that is the one place, the government funding budget bills is where rubber meets the road on this. And do you shut down the government and we're going to be back into the shutting down the government fight and look in fairness this time, we have more leverage than when we talked about shutting down the government over the last two years. And we still, there's still a lot of pressure to shut down the government, even though Democrats clearly did not have the leverage the Republicans had because we don't control Congress. So now we do control Congress. So what do you do? Do you shut down the government over, you know, you can't really do it over ice funding because ice is like now separately funded and good for several years. But like Medicaid cuts or ACA credits or any do you try to demand something, the reversal of some terrible Trump policy and threaten to shut the government down over it if you're the Democrats in charge. Right. Like I think the point that Tommy's making is right about, why aren't we achieving the big changes we're promising to do in the future? Yes. But in terms of owning the current state of the economy, making things feel better, not ideologically, but just cost of living and all the end, and just like kind of the daily stakes in the economy, like how do Democrats avoid taking ownership of that when they're kind of sending bills for Trump to veto or sending bills in the sense that I don't know, I actually think it's harder. It's hard. Dan, you want to jump in? Yeah. I'm kind of with Tommy that I'm not, this is a thing I'm not overly worried about for a couple of reasons. I don't think it's possible for, and there's not a lot of history for congressional majorities in divided government to take real ownership over the economy. Like I just, like you can, the only way to do it is to, would be to shut the government down in a very, very destructive and stupid way like New Key English did in, in 95 and 96. And I think you were right, John, that the cases where the pressure will rise on funding issue, at the moments of government funding, and where people will get pissed is if budget deals are cut to avoid that government shutdown, even if it is probably in the long run, most politically advantageous to us to avoid it, you know, and depending on how it looks at the moment, people will be pissed about that. And it's not about whether you can pass anything. It's about what you can stop from Trump. The other factor that I think is worth remembering is this is a, this is not just like 2020, 2020 where the democratic candidates are just campaigning and that's, and then there's, there's a whole other show over here with Trump in the government, is it's a open primary on both sides? Yep. And that's going to suck a lot of oxygen on me. I like no one paid a look at it. And once the Democrats like the majority in 2007, there was a bunch of attention early on on some things they did, they actually got pushed aside in a minimum wage increase. They passed them, they really pushed them ethics stuff, which Obama was involved in. But once you got to the end of 2000, once you get to the end of 2000, there'd be really to be middle of 2007, it was everyone was talking about the presidential campaign and that will likely happen here too. Yeah, I know. There's a discussion about like Jeffries and Schumer and they write for the moment in this and that like no one's going to care over the next two years. It's not going to be any of the attention is going to be focused on Congress. It is going to be 100% Republican primary successor to Trump, the 50,000 Democrats duking it out. Yeah. And Congress will be a backdrop. Just in terms of not saying it should be that way, I'm not saying that's what matters. But like in terms of the attention it will get, that is probably what's going to happen. Yeah, I wonder also the other part of this is the way Trump uses military funding. Trump is saying, let's say Trump says, I am vetoing any budget bill or any funding bill that does not increase funding for the Pentagon. Now we're in a fight over funding for the war. You have Democrats in the house breaking and joining with Republican. Like there is, I do think that there are some big thorny fights in which Democrats start to kind of own things. But the funnel is the Supreme Court justice dies. Like, let's steal the fucking seat back in some moderate Democrats like, no, no, no, no, the normal say that we need John, this is where this is where the difference between 51 and 52 is going to be unmarried. Yes. Okay. And this meanwhile, as we cruise towards saying that out loud and not knocking out wood as we get to 49. Yeah. Well, because we want everyone to be healthy. Right. No, no. No, no. Yeah. He wants to be kidding. I'm just kidding. Nick from Twitter asks, Trump's made quite a few damaging remarks about high prices and data centers this year. Would it be worthwhile for some Democratic pack to highlight these comments and national TV ads? How much should Dems prioritize a national media message during these midterms? Dan, what do you think? This is a little bit like, should I drive a Ferrari? It would be nice if I had the money to do it, but I don't. Right. Like, we did, like, so we don't, we just simply do not have the money to run a national campaign at this level. But let's live in hypothetical. There would be an argument for doing it, not a always on set of Democratic ads, or just running national ads, but picking a few high leverage moments with like big football games, money, night football, college, college football games where you would run like some national ads that I think it'd be less about Trump's, like, trying to drive Trump's numbers down from 32 to 31 and more about tying Republicans to Trump. Like, that's sort of the message you would want. You would want to have Trump and Republicans be out of touch in doing nothing about the cost of living. I feel like, Dan, do you think you could find the money to run not like a fake ad buy that's just like you run the spot once and then it's only on digital and you're just trying, it's basically a glorified press release, but a real national media buy that is like really smartly targeted. Like every cycle you read about how one campaign and the winning campaign was targeting swing voters on the tennis channel and it was this great cost effective way to have a national buy. So you buy like, you know, you buy something from national cable buy you some targeted stuff like tennis channel or bravo or whatever the hell it is and you just try to drive the conversation and the salience of this issue up and kind of force it into the zeitgeist a little more. I feel like that's doable. I mean, you're right. Like an LSU game like that's going to be a tough, tough buy. Well, I think the hard part is the diminishing returns of linear television. And so the way you would have to do it is you would do connected tele connected TV and spending. And I guess the one theory, the couple approaches here, one would be sort of national message. Other would be, you know, relatedly national branding or you can theoretically pick a group of people and try to drive an issue with that group of people using very, very targeted spending. I think that is probably relatively cost inefficient when those people are spread out in districts and you know, all across the country. Do you think it's prohibitively expensive to run an ad during the, like the NFL games, the nights of the Republican convention Thursday and Friday, where you do, like one example, I agree with you Dan on tying Trump to Republicans. So, um, per next point, you could, um, have Trump comments on data centers and talk about how wonderful they are and great. And then you could let people know that every single Republican that voted for Trump's big, beautiful bill, not only voted for Medicaid cuts, but voted for tax cuts for AI companies that build data centers in rural America, which is probably, which is a fact that probably a lot of people don't know and it would educate a lot of folks. You would need to run it many times. to get people to actually recall it. But you could do it and then try to, it mostly becomes a glorified press release. You only can do one of the full bookings 'cause I think the second one's on Netflix. - Right, right, right, it is. You have to do Wednesday night, the Pat's Seahawks game. - I mean, you, like, this is a place to do it. You get a lot of tension for it and then you could find, you could find like a tail effect where you're running in other places. But the big issue we see is we're gonna be massively outspent. We are really like, and every, this is like we talked about the DNC and that's obviously a specific problem. But the NRCC, the NRSC, I'll have more money in our opinions and then the Super PAC money, presuming Trump spends his money is just like an ungodly spending advantage. And so that money is coming from somewhere else, right? That's coming from a no-hi-o-bye and I-o-bye and Alaska-bye. - Damn. - Just rough out there. - It's rough out there. (upbeat music) - Pots of America is brought to you by Mint Mobile. We are officially at the tail end of summer. When we were kids this time of year meant soaking up the final days of freedom before heading back to the classroom. The good news, adult summer freedom doesn't have to end with the season thanks to big savings with Mint Mobile's summer sale. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited, so free yourself from big wireless and their gimmicks and gotchas and switch to Mint for high speed data and coverage on a T-Mobile 5G network. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with premium wireless for $15 a month. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can even bring your current phone and your number. Choose from three, six or 12 month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. Ditch over price wireless with Mint Mobile. It's so easy, sign up online and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month. To get your new wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com/cricod. That's mintmobile.com/cricod. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com/cricod. That's it, there's no catch. Up from payment of $45 for $3 months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 months plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot, capable device required availability, speeding coverage vary, see mintmobile.com. Pots of America is brought to you by Zibiotics Pre-Alcohol. I have to tell you about this game changing product. I drink before a night out with drinks. It's called Pre-Alcohol by Zibiotics. Zibiotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic Drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was engineered by PhD microbiologist to break down Acetoldehyde, an unwanted byproduct of alcoholic metabolism. Make Pre-Alcohol your first drink of the night drink responsibly and enjoy your next day activities. Zibiotics has sold more than 14 million bottles and earned the trust of thousands, including us. Love Zibiotics. I had it this weekend at a night with a bunch of friends and I was like, you know what, I'm having a bunch of drinks. Before I do that, I'm having Zibiotics. And then I did, and then I felt great the next day. Try it yourself today, and if you're unsatisfied, they will refund your entire order. No questions asked. Head to Zibiotics.com/CricketCodeCricket for 15% off your first order. That's ZB-I-O-T-I-C-S. com/CricketCodeCricket. (upbeat music) - All right, the next question is a voice mail message from one of our cricket subscribers. - Hey guys, this is Ethan from Lovely Lawrence, Kansas here. I am calling for the Mailbag episode. I've been seeing an online trend of people posting their favorite campaign ads and the time has come for transparency, for truth. We need to know who is responsible for the Big Bird ad from the 2012 campaign. On the same topic, are there any Obama area ads or maybe not Obama area ads that you are particularly fond of or not so fond of? What are your favorite political ads of all time? Thanks and I approve this message. (laughing) - I didn't remember this ad. - Dan, you must remember. You have a better-- - I do, this was after the debate where the terrible debate that Obama flobbed against Rob Day. And in that debate, one of the things that came up was Romney's position that we should defund PBS. And so we did an ad with Big Bird attacking him for defunding Sesame Street. - And it was basically like the idea of the ad was like, Big Bird is a criminal mastermind. And you don't want to like, he's like menacing and so we've got to cut PBS and-- - The things that we made big deals out of back then, huh? - Yeah. - Yeah, it was just, you know. We didn't dog on a car. - Right. (laughing) - Favorite ads, least favorite ads from everyone? - You know what I was remembering today was the microvell, the rock ad for those who don't want this. - Microvell. - Oh, you read it though. - Yeah. - So don't steal my punchline. Microvell stares into the camera. Silently for like 45 seconds, and then he walks away, he throws a rock into a lake, and then he walks out of frame. It's like a minute and a half long. And this was microvell he ran into in 2008. And then later, you ran again. Then like later these two teenage kids took over Twitter feed. They were posting all this kind of like anti-establishment anti-corporateists, anti-money in politics kind of stuff. And earlier this week, we learned that they took jobs at OpenAI. - Oh wow. - That's awesome. - The grovell tips took jobs. - Oh, that's awesome. - The grovell teens are now. - Yeah, man, you did. - Worked for Sam Altman. - You did die, Mike, grovell. You live long enough to become Sam Altman. - Dan, you were saying you love the Tim Horton ad? Oh, sorry, Willie Horton. - Willie Horton was what you were doing. - I love it, I love it. - You're loving that about a Canadian fast-food restaurant. - Oh, because he was saying, I thought his favorite over the Jesse Helms black hands, white hands ad. That's your favorite ad. You like the white hands crumbling up a letter about not getting a job. I don't know. I'm not familiar with the ad you're talking about. The best ad of the Obama era. And possibly, this entire modern era politics is the Mitt Romney singing America the Beautiful ad. - Oh, good one. - Oh, good one. - Really good. - Is that a super PAC ad or is that us? - And that was us. And it's Mitt Romney saying America the Beautiful at an event. And I would say not the appropriate key. And so it's just a video of him singing it with all these headlines of, you know, Mitt Romney's firm who sends jobs to Mexico and China. Santa Massachusetts outsources jobs to India. It just, he has a Swiss bank account. And sound effects. The sound effects in the ad, so it was, 'cause it's him singing and then it would cut to those facts. And it becomes this sort of echoey hollow version of it. It's excellent. - Empty factory, yeah. - Reverberation. - Yeah, kind of big empty room. - And then it ends with Mitt Romney is the problem, not the solution. Which is the exact right, like just nails and the message of that election so perfectly. - I was just remembering the Hillary Clinton 3 A.M. ad. Good one. Remember that? - It was so good. - Mark Penn, a Mark Penn ad. - Really good ad. - Really good ad. - Yeah, it worked. - Well, hey, hey, everything a losing campaign does is in Rom. (laughing) - All right. - Basically for those who, you mean you can all look it up, but it's someone's getting a call in the middle of the night. And you can see that they pick up the phone and they're just like, it's like a normal person in a house. And then, but the whole point of the ad is like when something happens at 3 A.M. in the world, some scary thing that happens, who do you want picking up the phone? Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? And it was supposed to be obviously Hillary Clinton. - Yeah. It was in the strength plus experience equals change era. - That's right. - Which of course leads to my favorite fact, which is change divided by strength plus experience. Equals one. I don't know that. - The one that was most controversial. Well, from the McCain side, it was Barack Obama's the biggest celebrity in the world. And that was viewed as some Britney Spears, Paris Hill, it's dumb. - It was a terrible. That was so stupid. - And it was just like completely uncontroversial. But then on our side, we did want about how John McCain is old. And it was like John McCain doesn't know how to use a computer. And it's like him attempting to type and Joe Biden to next it. - I was very impulsive that one. That was one of the several perfect project of mine. And I stand by it to this day. - That was great. - Right, but then it turned out he couldn't use the computer because of the torture he experiences. But I can't use a keyboard because I was fucking tortured for this country piece of shit. And I was like, oh, that's a notch by. I was like, take that one now. - That was very effective in the moment. - I was like, it is when I think of like the most effective political ads though, I just do think of Republican attack. And it's like, I think of the wolves. - The wolves. - That wolf from George W. Bush. - George W. Bush. Watch that wolves ad. It is chilling. And it is a disgusting bit of misinformation because it basically relies on people to not understand that they were, or not even consider that there were two attacks on the World Trade Center. So it says something, I'm going to paraphrase it, but it's something long lines of like, John Kerry didn't support security funding after the attack on the World Trade Center. - Oh, that was so exciting. - And it was meant to be about, and it clearly meant to imply 9/11. - Yeah. - But it was actually about the 1992 bombing of the World Trade Center. So it was just a disgusting, it's just George W. Bush gets the kind of patina of not being trumped now, but man, that campaign, they were despicable. - They did blame Saddam for 9/11, too. So we should have been ready for that one. - Yeah. (laughing) - We'll see. - Wow. All right, next question. Subscriber NH603er. How do you guys view the rise of the alt-right groipers that seem to be gaining popularity with younger men? The James Fishback race in Florida fizzled out, but he made real strides with younger voters, should Democrats try to paint the GOP as a party embracing those folks going forward? It feels like a very real phenomenon, unfortunately. Tommy? - I think it's a huge problem. I mean, Nick Fuente has the kind of leader of the groipers. He was barred from CPAC, maybe, or maybe TPUSA. He was barred from TPUSA events, and really ostracized from the Republican party, as recently as like 2020. 2021, 2022. And then he had dinner with Trump and Kanye. And then later, much later, when I talk to Carlson show and now that kind of like fringe, gripper right wing has been normalized. And you know, Fuentes has tried to sand off his edges, but I think his listeners know it's a game and he's a big and growing audience. And I think it was sort of embodied by Fishback and Florida and his candidacy that got what 10% or something like that. I mean, it did quite well in that primary fishback. Also, I think openly praised and associated with Fuentes. There was that Trump aid, Paul and Gracia, who said, I have a quote, Nazi streak. I think he's still employed there. I think there's a conservative journalist named Rod Draer, who said that he believes 40% of mega staffers are grippers. So I think the the political piece that's important, though, is I think it's I think it's important not to paint all Republicans or all young men as kind of fringe nuts like this. I think third way has a pull out from a while back that has Democrats winning young men overall. This is a problem of radicalism within the hard right and is not one unique to the United States. In Germany, the AFD is getting like a quarter of men under 25 in the sort of similar levels. It's like in the EU, like 21% of men under 30 across the EU back right wing populist or far right parties, whereas younger women are breaking hearts to the left. So I think we need to think about, yes, creating a political cost for Republicans being associated with these far right fringe groups, but also thinking about the issues that are driving people into these parties, whether it's anti-establishment, thinking whether it's anti-immigrant sentiment, and think about how we calibrate to better reach these people. Unfortunately, because we're in a moment where some of these people will say such extreme things. Fishback said during the campaign that the biggest issue Republicans aren't talking about is white genocide, just said that. He also said, if you want to set our kids up for failure, you would feed them the absolute goi-slop in our cafeterias. That is basically a term that the Nazis have a more popular conspiracy that Jews are feeding non-Jewish masses by giving them low-quality food. That's what he did there. Which we haven't even started rolling out yet. We're still testing it out. We're still going to goi-slop is actual food. It's not just dumb information. It's not both, right? I think there's a lot of different ways. Crazy. But I think the point is, I don't think there's a need to characterize or editorialize or label these people. Just use their words. Just use their words to your point on me, because I think also, unfortunately, you're calling someone racist, anti-Semi. It has become so frequent over the last several years. In politics, sometimes people use those terms. You don't know the severity of what the person said. These are so severe that I think just laying the statements out there using these people's own words is probably the most important thing to do without just short-cutting it or just editorializing it. You just put it out there for people. I also do think sometimes, especially for people that are just hyper-engaged in politics, we tend to get the direction wrong between behavior and points of view. We think, "Oh, if you persuade people that there's a climate emergency, maybe they'll ride a bike." But actually, the best way to get someone to understand that the climate is important is by getting someone to ride a bike and by their behavior, they come to reveal their preference and take in the idea that what they're doing is part of their identity. You can try to persuade people, and I think we should. But also, the path to the online right-wing, extremist path is also just a path to misery and loneliness. It isolates you from women. You want nothing to do with you. It leaves you in the throws of the Andrew Tates of the world trying to convince you of something that just simply isn't true. If you want to live a happy life, you just have to get away from this stuff. Once you start coming out and engaging with the world and being open to people that you might have thought otherwise wouldn't be part of your community, all of a sudden you'll realize how stupid and terrible these other views were too. Just getting people to realize, forget what your ideology is. Aren't you unhappy? Doesn't this suck? Aren't you miserable being online and angry all the time? Susan on Facebook asks, "If you were advising a Democratic presidential campaign, how would you recommend they talk about foreign policy in the world? Should they be talking about improving the United States' global standing after Trump? I'm going to go to Dan first on this one. Yeah, Dan, what do you got, buddy? This is an easy one, one word answer. Don't. I thought I'd go to Dan first so he would say that. Dan actually drafted the Darlene Graham answer. He said, "Here's what you say. You say you don't know about foreign policy. You're going to win. I promise. People are going to create, make fun of you online. They're stupid." If she say, "I don't do foreign policy," you're going to beat this fucking congressman. You know what's funny? I bet there's a version of that answer where she's like, "I don't give a fuck about this boring crap." You know, that's like more effective actually, people would have liked, but whatever. She can't say, "I don't do foreign policy. You're currently a senator." Yeah, you're doing it. You're not just applying for the job. I'll read up. No, she actually said one point. She's like, "I'll read up once I get there and it's like once you get there, you're there." Yeah. I'll leave you on some very important committees. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, really, really briefly, I think I would just, the number one thing is we've got to take back the mantle of being the anti-war party. It's crazy that we lost that to Donald Trump, especially given what we've seen him do in Iran. We need some sort of smart version of what a newly rebuilt USAID would look like. I don't think that you can just run it back the same way. It's got to be different. And then there will be, there's going to be a big conversation about what a democratic party trade agenda looks like that I think is very relevant to people, but I don't know what that is. It's not going to be tariffs. But will be repealing the tariffs? Yes. I mean, I think so. I don't know. It should be. You heard Jeffries the other day. I know. I heard Newsom the other day being like, "I couldn't guarantee that I would repeal all the tariffs." Maybe not all of them, but like, 50% tariffs on Canada for no reason? I believe there's a kind of catch-all answer for this kind of question right now, which is, we're not going to do, we're not going to repeal things just because Trump did them, but we're not going to leave and place anything, anything that he did was dumb and stupid and destructive to the economy, but there are some cases where long before Trump, we all would have agreed that we need to do something to protect American manufacturing. That's not a reasonable answer. So your point, Dan, about don't, I wonder if there's a political case, just pure political poll-driven case, that this election in '28 will be similar to 2008 in that you have a president who had just gotten us into an unbelievably unpopular war and hated or at least not liked around the world. And we actually saw in that election that it was not just the right thing to do, but politically useful to talk about foreign policy and like restoring respect for America and ending stupid wars and investing more in home, like it does feel like this is going to be an election where it would be beneficial for the 2028 candidates to talk a little bit about foreign policy. I don't know necessarily about like rebuilding our NATO alliances, but we don't have to. Sure, Biden, save NATO. That's right, that's right. But let me give a real answer here. Like, I always joke about this because when we were in the White House, like you could watch it in focus groups and dial groups that every time Obama was in the midst of a financial crisis, every time Obama was doing something on foreign policy that was it ending a war or making America safer? Like people, the dials went down, people got mad. It was a, like you could see it in all the city unions. It was just like, it was a thing. It was a constant battle in the White House about how much foreign policy first published in Messing Policy. You do. I think you are correct, John, that in a campaign, especially if we are still in a war in Iran, foreign policy is going to matter. And you have to, at to Tommy's point, be the anti-war party. You we have to, like there, there, there is a space in discussion. And there is particularly in a campaign, especially given a lot of our candidates are in the levels of experience they have. There's a threshold you have to meet to have people believe you can actually do that part of the job. And so you're going to have to talk about it. Yeah. All right. Dr. Guy Montag from Twitter asks, what do you think the pod accomplishes, given the audience already agrees with you slash votes damn? It's nice to hear from Spencer Pratt's father-in-law, first of all, Dr. Montag. Dr. Montag. Yeah. It's actually a character, like a Ray Bradbury character. But anyway, Dr. Guy Montag, I mean, I guess I'd direct you to the comments if you think that everyone agrees with her likes, what they hear on the show. That's not my out. Good point. Because those will quickly disobey you. I think over the years, I've heard from a lot of people in real life that they're like, oh, I listen to you guys sometimes and like Tucker sometimes or Ben Shapiro sometimes are filling the conservative blank. Because a lot of people do kind of want to hear from the left and the right. But I mean, another big goal of the show is not just to like talk to people about what's happening in the world, but get them to get involved in politics, be activists in their own lives, knock on doors, donate. So that's a really big part of what we do here. And why it matters, we think. Yeah. Also, the audience doesn't agree with itself. It doesn't always agree with us. And we don't always agree with each other. And I think if you turn on, say Fox News right at this moment, you'll probably see a big picture of Hassan Piker and in between Abdul Al-Sahead and maybe a trans swimmer in there once in a while. But like, and even in the mainstream media, like I like Jonathan Martin is a great reporter. But when he is asking Rob Sands if he wants Kamala to campaign is he has a different interest than we do in building a big democratic successful electoral coalition. And so there does need to be a place where we can have these interparty, inter-movement conversations in a way that are productive and constructive. And that's, I think, part of what we try to do with our guests here. That's what we try to do with CricketCon. And there does need to be a place for that. And that is valuable, even if a lot of the audience does largely agree and vote Democratic. Subscribers ZZ asks, "Best reasons to attend CricketCon? Fab said there will be drinks. I want to hear more. What more is there?" There's drinks. She wants to have their apps. Yeah, well, they'll be with a can of peace. Yeah, they'll be also K and Iowasca. Like, what do you think it's going to be? Yeah, they'll be various kinds of cocktails you can get. Are your hands shaking? Is this a Pete Hexeth burner account? You could meet a cute ice officer or national guards. Oh, yeah. It's a Washington to keep the peace. Yep, sure. So press insurrections. Some great panels. Everyone wants a great panel. Yeah. That's right. Good conversation. When I suggested this question, I said this would be a great place for an organic plug for CricketCon. So let me try it. By the way, hitting it out of the park down. Organic plug, it really helps. I also just did an organic plug for CricketCon. I fucking did. I read the brief. This would be my pitch to anyone about why to come. If you are a person who works in politics or wants to work in politics, there is no better place to be to meet the people at all levels of politics who are working in their communities, nationally on Capitol Hill, to actually bring change. It's a great place to network. It's a great place to learn. You said they're going to be incredible panels. It's going to be a lot of fun. So like this is it is a there's a real opportunity there. So organic. Also, I wanted some music under that. We're also like the next two months. We're all going to be going crazy about these midterms. I mean, nervous me looking at the polls. Hopefully be volunteering. And what a great opportunity after the midterms to just like get together with a bunch of people and be like, all right. So we all just went through that together. Yeah. We get to all be together and wait for the votes in Alaska to come. Got to say, we can talk about the one the elections be one, the ones we lost, the militia we're going to put together to rescue those voting tabulators from Wyoming. Positive America is brought to you by Bombas. Summer is coming to an end. So we're soaking up every outdoor moment that we can from runs in the park to beach days to backyard barbecues. Bombas makes your comfy footwear staples so you can enjoy the end of summer and the transition to fall. They've got a whole line of pro level sport specific socks for golf, yoga, the gym, and for every kind of runner. Plus, they're airy and sweat wicking. So your feet will feel as good at the end of the day as they did at the start. Do you know what EVA stands for? Great. Neither do I. I just know that Bombas makes their sandals and slides from this super light cushy waterproof EVA foam. It's like walking on marshmallows or clouds. I wear my everyday. I love them if you're into that sort of thing. And for every item you purchase an essential clothing item is donated to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchased equals one donated with over 200 million donations and counting. I genuinely love Bombas socks. I own a ton of them. I periodically throw out all my crappy old socks that no longer fit or have holes in them or won't stay up. And I replace them exclusively with Bombas. You should too. Head over to bombas.com/cricket. Use the code crooked for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash crooked code crooked at checkout. I'm Nate Silver. I'm Galen Drew. And I'm Claire Malone. We're back. This time with our friends at crooked media for a new show called "Still Counting." Yeah, numbers are hard. It takes very easy. And frankly, numbers have only gotten harder. What does the data actually say? How do we reconcile that with the other things that we're seeing in American politics and around the world? And how do we use that data to understand or maybe even dare to predict the future of American politics? New episodes every Wednesday starting September 9th. Subscribe to Still Counting on youtube.com/atstillcountingpodcast or wherever you get your podcast. Yeah, there's a lot of times where I'm like, "Stop. You're walking somewhere. Just walk with the phone in your pocket." Yeah, walk with the phone in your pocket. I have too many tabs open, and I often never come back to the ones I have open. I'm just sort of always falling behind my tabs. It's the my biggest regret are the longer articles that I've never gotten to. Like as I said here, I'm like, "Oh, I never read that Atlantic story by the person you had offline." Tyler Austin Harper. Tyler Austin Harper. I have that open in the episode. Yeah, so I got the gist of it for sure. And I heard you prepping for it. You were next to me prepping for it. So by osmosis, I feel like I kind of got the gist. Because you remember you turned to me and you can you believe this? And that's really called you. That's the main takeaway from it. Can you believe this? And so I feel good about it. Mine is too many Twitter alerts. Oh, yeah. I've been with you when all of your phones have blown up with like 10 Twitter alerts. I'm like, you really have that many notifications from Twitter. I do because I trying to spend less time in the actual feed, which I found to be very bad for me mentally in a lot of ways. And now it's still still kind of sucks. And so this way, I am trying to optimize my news consumption for the people or the things I care about. That's good. That's smart. No, it's not smart because it's your constantly under fire. Under fire. Be coletta from Instagram asks any recommendation for podcasts, newsletters, et cetera, to better understand what's happening on the right time. I feel like you've got this. I mean, Will Summers false swag news letter at the bulwark is a great way to have someone curated it all for you and explain it for you and kind of unravel and unpack all the insanity and the relationships and why they all hate each other. But then you got to decide if you want to dive in the pool yourself and start listening. That's that's a different. That's a different beast. Do you want to go down the Tucker road and catch that monologue? I've always I just have always enjoyed. He can be an asshole about Democrats. I think he wrote a book called Liberal Fascists that tells you where his head was at, but I just always found Jonah Goldberg to be a really entertaining writer. I just always have I have and I did that and he's he's anti-Trump. He's you know, he doesn't like us much either. He doesn't like much of anything. But I enjoy his content. Brianna from Instagram asks, I want to become a speech writer. Where should I start? And Isabel on Instagram asks, any advice for new college grads looking for campaign jobs? So when I I watched the West Wing and wanted to be a speech writer, but I didn't know real plan or or understanding for how to make that happen. As you can see from my, if you're familiar with this program, I sort of careen through a lot of careening in my life. But I volunteered on the Carey Edwards campaign in 2004. And when I was with me, John was upstairs as a junior speech writer. And I just volunteered to write anything. So they needed up regional op-eds in regional newspapers. Newspapers were these things they printed all across the country and people could could read about their area. And so they would always have these surrogates that would be publishing local op-eds, congresspeople, pastors, whatever. And I just would jump and sort of do the draft of them and they go through the chain and other people would edit them and fix them and make them make sense. I didn't know what I was doing. And then there were like several hurricanes that year in 2004. There was Ivan and three or four others. And so someone was always like, we need somebody to draft the John Carey thoughts and prayers, hurricane victim statement. And I just ended up doing a bunch of those. And the people that I was writing them for remember that I could put a sense together when they were looking for someone to be in a junior job on Capitol Hill. So for me, it was like just as an intern slash volunteer kind of just jumping on those things. Yeah, we're in the press office, communications office. If you want to be a speech writer, because that's really the best way into it, because they'll get a chance to write. It's hard to just like apply to be speech writer without previous writing and campaign experience. Dan Tommy, what about getting campaign jobs out of college? I mean, I just think like don't think you can select your job. Take whatever job you can get. And don't worry about it not being a policy job or a communication job or the thing you want to do. Just get in the door. Meet the people. Work your ass off. People will notice if you are a hard worker that's smart, that's capable, that gets stuff done for them when they ask and they will give you the next thing. If you suggest that you want to be a speech writer or work in the policy office, I would immediately touch a resume in the waste bin. Like you want people who are just going to come in and do whatever and then find their place and get there the way love it did by just taking an opportunity and being good at it. But if people there's always a warning sign when someone says they want to do policy as a 22 year old getting out of college going to work on a house campaign. Usually they've come right from Harvard. Princeton, somewhere like that. Love it. You have some you have some questions. Oh yeah. I have a few sort of hypotheticals that I'll put in front of you. And I'll also just sort of thought starting questions. There is a button in front of you. If you press it, you lose a month of life at the end of your life, but you gain a week of your life at the current age. Do you press it and if so, how many times? Oh, oh, you can press it multiple times. Multiple times. Well, you lose a month in your in your in your in your in your two months, the other. Right. So you start well, you don't know when the end of your life is. No, but let's assume you're going to live to an old age. So this is sort of in your in your sort of decrepitude, you're kind of declining moments. You have less time, but more or less time than you would gain having more time. So what am I gaining? Is it now a 53 week year? If I push it once in my life, you are younger. I can't. You have more years of your current youth and vitality. Be as it were. time doesn't freeze. No, time does not freeze everything. You're just going to be younger for longer, but not as much as you'll lose at the end of your life. If we're talking about being like between 90 and 90 and a half, I'm hammering that button. Wow, interesting. That's not a good time. I'm not pushing it. Not once. But because we don't know, I'm not pushing it ever. Yeah, I went through it and I was like, yeah, I'll push that. Then I'm like, if you don't know, I don't know if I want to push it. I mean, you're, you know, you're, we're all at the point where we're likely to live deep into our 80s. That's really based on that based on that based on that. I mean, it's just what the table say, you know, I mean, the hard part is if you're an old parent with young kids, you probably want to save all the time at the end. Yeah, that's a good point. Or you want to be more vital now. This is the challenge. Or I mean, why don't you, why don't you just eat healthy and work out and then live a lot of keep that extra month? Yeah, press the button in the fridge in a sentence. Okay. So are you pressing it? No, I'm not pressing it. Dan. Nope. Tommy. No. Now pressing it. Next question. Are you president? Oh, no. I'm committed to the idea that being old and falling apart is just part of the experience. Yeah, you got to do the whole ride. Do you eat up the floor? Five second rule. I usually do a five second round depends on where the floor is. If something just drops quickly, I mean, when you say do eat out the floor, I imagine like what are your rules? So for me, I think if it's wet, no, no wet food comes back up. But dry food, yeah, for sure, no problem inside outside. I don't care. But if it's if that's out on the sidewalk, I don't know. I don't know. Or like if I'm in like an airport. Airports tough. Airports tough. But home, we're ready. Oh, for sure. Oh, God. Yeah. Next question. You go back in time. It's your 1907, you're in Vienna, Austria, and there he is. The source of so much pain and misfortune and death. The artist and professor who rejected Hitler's application to the Academy of Fine Arts with a falling note, quote, sample drawing unsatisfactory too many heads. Do you kill Christian Guirpen girl? Guirpen. Kill Christian group and curl. Why are we killing him? Because he rejected Hitler. Had he not if he is dead and Hitler was accepted to the Academy of Fine Arts. Oh, there is no assumption is Hitler gets accepted. Yes. He is the person. He was the reason he didn't get it. He he was what if someone else wasn't going to get him in? Let's under under the assumption that killing Christian group and curl allows Hitler to become an artist. John wants more information on the admissions process. Is there somebody we could call? Is there a joint? Is there a joint agent on the tennis team? Yeah. Do I know anybody on the board of the Vienna Society? Get him an IL deal. I don't want to be killed. This guy of Hitler was just going to get it anyway. Well, that's a question. Let's blow it on your hands. Yeah. What if the person who who spot Hitler takes becomes a worse Hitler? Right. That's interesting. That's interesting. That's too much too much of a bank shot. I feel like love is guaranteed. I'm saying Hitler, the rise of national socialism is certainly dependent upon Hitler not becoming an artist. So I think you can safely say what I also think it's a it's quite a presumption to think that if Hitler didn't become an artist or if Hitler did become an artist, he wouldn't have found his way to Nazism somehow. And then you just killed just a personality. Yeah, I'm just trying to save the sky. Right. I mean, there is an argument for can't justify this, you know, because you'll just be going to jail for the rest of your life in Austria because people will be like, why did you kill him? You know, you had no idea. Now I'm stuck in jail in 1908 in Austria. Yeah, that's a bummer. All right. Next is the voice in your head in the first person, second person, third person, or does it shift? In other words, do you say, if you say something stupid, do you say, why did I say that? Do you say to yourself, why did you say that? If Dan does a good job in the pod, does he said, I really crushed it today? Or does he say, Dan really crushed it? What do you, what do you tell me? No one says the third person. Some people is not mine. I don't speak. I don't think of myself in the third person. Pretty sure. I'm a you. That's interesting. You're a second person. You speak to yourself. What do you, what do you do, Dan? First person. Yeah. It's funny. We love it. Previewed this, this one question to me and Tommy. And I started thinking about it. And I was like, I don't think I do either. There you did. You're first person. You just did it. And now I'm talking right now. You're talking. But I was like, I don't know if I identify my, like, there's definitely a voice in there. But I don't know if it's saying, like, John, you did this or I did the like, I think I would lean towards I, but I'm not sure that I do this at all. For me, I think it's our back at next. No, back. It's mostly for me. I, it's mostly I, I, but every once in a while, I'll be like, God, you're fucking moron. Like, I'll dip. I'll definitely throw myself a punch. Yeah. I bet I switch up between first and second. Definitely no. I never thought Tommy hungry. Don't some people not have an internal monologue? Isn't that a thing that we know about? Maybe come press United States. Final, final question. A wizard punishes you for being disloyal to Joe Biden. You are, you are. It's the wizard. It's a wizard. It's a wizard. It's some kind of a wizard. You are suddenly trapped in the body of a dog in your family home. And as part of the spell, your family accepts that you are a beloved family pet and that you, and that you, the actual you are on some kind of extended work trip and fine. How would you try to communicate? What is happening to your wife? And do you believe you could successfully tell your wife that you are a human trapped in a dog's body and in fact, her husband. And what would your strategy be? Just I would give up. There's no way Emily would ever be able to figure that out. Nor would Leo be able to communicate that too, Emily, if I was like, no, but you're you. You're you. But like, you have your full brain. You're full brain there. Yeah, I know. And knowledge. But I still have I'm still have a dog body. And that's right. Not speak. That's where you can bark. You have the power of barking and pause. To me, what I was trying to get to is can I get to a point where it is clear that one bark is yes, two barks is no. Because once you've got yes and no, you're off to the fucking races. If you could do number, you can do numbers right. There's ways. It's like you're you're an alien trying to figure out a communicate with a person. I think my strategy would be to find paint. And then use my paws. Wow. Get some tomato sauce. Oh my God. That's so smart, Dan. Now, now you like, you know, you're like, I was thinking of just like things on the ground. Before you read say paint, just like there's plenty of toys in my house. Just like move them with my paws to spell I am John. That's great. And by the way, freaky. Emily's in a panic. Emily's like, did I take the right to listen with my mixing things, fuck. Yeah, I think that I what did I take the challenge here is having Hannah be open to the universe of this communication happening. And I feel like that's far more my role that the think of the dog would talk to me. Well, now, now, now I'm trying to play it out because the first I would be like, oh my God, Leo just or this dog, whatever, it would just spelled out, I am John. So she texts me and then I don't respond because I'm on an extended work trip. And then you spend the things to then the wheel start rolling. Is this a movie? Right. It could be. It could be a movie. It could be a movie. All right. Well, that was all I've gone. Well, that's food for thought. Food for thought everyone. Great work. There are a bunch more great questions that we didn't have time to get to today. Read is going to field a bunch of those in this week's open tabs. So that's exciting. Love it. Have you sent them to read for open tabs? You bet. Our Substak newsletter are subscribed to credit friends of the pod. If you want access to our Substak newsletter and add free episodes of all of our great crooked pods. Pods of America is brought to you by Zippercruder. Listeners, here's a riddle. What do gear heads and news junkies, biohackers, commoners and true crime obsessed wine moms all have in common. They all have heard a lot of Zippercruder ads. Let's face it. Zippercruder is everywhere. Why are they everywhere? Because great candidates for all your different roles are everywhere. Just like you, these people listen to business shows, sports shows and yes, even this show. And when these candidates hear all these ads, it increases the chances of them going to Zippercruder and responding to your job post. So ultimately you meet them sooner. Of course, you can't meet them unless you go to Zippercruder.com/corkit to try it for free. Then once you post your job, Zippercruder's powerful matching technology finds top talent quickly. And Zippercruder has a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first. So you meet them faster. No wonder four out of five employers who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. We've used Zippercruder here at Cricut to find great people and it just helps make the process of finding applicants who are qualified and interested easier and finding the right people is one of the hardest parts about having a company. But you already know that. So you've got to go to Zippercruder.com/cricut to post your job for free. Once again, that zippercruder.com/cricut. Oh, and if you forget where to go, don't worry, you will hear another ad soon enough. The Zippercruder ads will continue until morale improves. I'm Nate Silver. I'm Galen Drook. We're back this time with our friends at Crooked Media for a new show called Still Counting. Yeah, numbers are hard. It takes very easy. What does the data actually cite? Subscribe to Still Counting on youtube.com/at Still Counting Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I am very excited to welcome back to pot save America, the president of vote save America. Shiniko McClendon, great to see you. Good to see you too. How you been? How's D.C.? Seems a little steamy there, maybe? It is very hot. I think it's 90-something degrees today, and Donald Trump still lives here. It's all that takes burning up the place. We wanted to talk about votes of America's work, the cycle, and your plan to take back the House and the Senate. No pressure. This year, you guys launched a program called The Crooked Dozen. It's an effort to flip 12 of the most beatable and most annoying Republicans in the House's representatives. Tell us a little bit about The Crooked Dozen. Tell us about the effort. Yes. When we were coming up with this list, we weren't just thinking about what are the most competitive races out there. We were thinking about who are the worst candidates out there, the worst Republican incumbents who just will get their constituents blood boiling and want to get them out of office. We were thinking about people who might seem like they hate their constituents. Congresswoman Miller Meeks, she's opposed to capping insulin prices, which seems crazy. She actually has gotten into a lot of arguments with her constituents, so she might just literally not like them. Only one by around 700 points last time. She's someone who has made her constituents agree and actually didn't have a huge margin to begin with. This is part of a larger electoral strategy that we had been thinking about for some time. Democrats are largely expected to win the House this year, but if Democrats only have a few seats that they have a majority with, that's not really a governing majority. You will have some people who might vote with Republicans sometimes and just make things more difficult. We're thinking about how can we create a governing majority? Doing that by looking at races that maybe other people are not looking at fewer Democratic incumbents and seeing how we can flip more Republican-held seats, which is how we got to some of the Crooked Dozen that we have now. I love it. Get hit the gas. This is going to be a good year. We got some big moments behind us. I love that you just, you mentioned Iowa because that's also a state where there are two big statewide races where we have great Democrats at the top of the ticket. You got to rob saying run for governor. I just, I want to govern for a day. We got to take that seat. Got a great Senate candidate, Josh Turek. There's amazing New York Times piece about Josh Turek today, Friday, September 4th. That's worth your time. So I think it's really smart for you guys to focus on some of the down ballot races that maybe you're not getting the national attention or the money, but need our help. Another one we should just talk about for a second is Max Miller. It's pretty obvious why he's on the list. We had Brian Point Dexter on this show, his opponent, good iron worker from Ohio. That feels like another exciting race. We have a big good opportunity for a pickup, right? Yeah. On both sides, Brian is great, but Max Miller is, I mean, he's just awful. He's been in the Crooked Dozen. We'll continue to be in the Crooked Dozen. We haven't gotten as lucky with him. Two of the people who are actually in the Crooked Dozen already have been kicked out. What happens? You know, it kind of sucks for us because I would have loved to beat them. But one of them Andy Ogles, he was just too extreme and he did not make it out of his Republican primary. Imagine being like too crazy for the current Naga primary base. Anyway, continue. Sorry. Yeah. Which I think says something that could be exciting about at least just having normal Republicans in Congress again. And then in North Carolina 11, I'm not from North Carolina 11, but I am from North Carolina. So this got me excited. Charles, sorry, check Edwards, which I guess his name is Charles. Yeah. He just had some weird harassment scandal. I think he was censored recently and he gave some of his women's staffers guns. So just a lot of crazy stuff happening in that office, but now they're not in the Crooked Dozen anymore. So we replaced them. We actually ran a little competition online to see who our audience thought the next two additions to the Crooked Dozen should be. And those results led to David Valideo and California 22 and gave Evans and Colorado eight. If you, you know, if anyone wants to see it, they can go look at the post and see some of the comments from people who live in those districts and how strong feelings about that. I love that. You gotta let the people decide what the masses dictate to us who gets on this list. We should say, check Edwards gigantic creep. I believe he harassed his staffers so often that he gave one of them. I think a jigsaw puzzle. And the form of an invitation to a date like, buddy, what are you doing? But yes, no, I'm glad we removed them and added some new folks to target. All right. So let's talk about how Voltae of America's tactics this year are not the same as they were in 2024. How are they evolving? How are you guys thinking differently about these races? Something that we have done since Voltae of America was started is always make sure when we are asking people to give us their time, attention or energy or time, attention or money that we're spending it as effectively as possible. And so after 2024, you know, I think a lot of people listening to this podcast probably went in knock doors. They called voters. But if you are existing in today's world, when you knock on those doors, a lot of people have, you know, I know, simply safe as one of our advertisers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people do not want to talk to the canvassers who are coming by. And then I don't, okay, I've gotten mixed answers on this. You have an iPhone. Are your text messages filtered now? Oh God, yeah. It doesn't always help what they are. Yeah. But you see a lot less of those like campaign texts coming through. So if you have people who are calling and it says potential spam, people don't answer that. And they're just trying to get you to vote. Same with those text messages that people aren't seeing. So we have been thinking about like, how do we respond to that? And, you know, in addition to kind of those changes, we also know that people, they trust the people who are in their lives. If they follow people online, they trust the people that they've chose to follow online. So the stuff that we're doing this year is really focused on how do we meet people kind of in their personal relationships, but also on their kind of like pair of social and online relationships. And that's what we're going to be mobilizing our audience around this year. And so I won't go into a ton of detail. We actually will be having a call this evening if you are hearing this on Tuesday. And so you can go to votesafeamerica.com to sign up, or we're going to go into more tea detail. But generally, we will be training the audience on how to map their network into the targets that we're focused on. So they can talk to the people they know in those places and get them to vote, make sure they know stuff. Like, you know, that David Valladillo voted to throw a bunch of people off of Medicaid, even though he has one of the highest percentage of Medicaid recipients in his district. And so that's the kind of information we want to make sure people have to talk to the people they know. But we're also going to go online and make sure that we're engaging with some of the content that can reach people who might not otherwise pay attention to what's happening in politics, but also make sure you can share stuff in your group chats and just are meeting people more directly. And that's not to say that door knocking and phone banking don't matter in certain places. They do. But after so many hundreds of thousands of people over a billion dollars was spent in 2024, we just knew that there were some new tactics that needed to be in the mix when we're trying to win these elections. You got to evolve. We're like Darwin over here in the political world. You got to evolve. All right. Where can folks go to get involved if they like what you're saying if they want to be a part of it and they want to toss out the crooked dozen? Go to votesafeamerica.com. You can sign up for the call that we have this evening. John Favreau and Abdul Al Sayed will be joining me in credit cards. So it will be an exciting call. And just generally you can go to votesafeamerica.com. One other thing I'll throw in there is, you know, this work requires a lot of money. If you are paying attention to political news right now, a lot of donors are still really frustrated about 2024. But a lot of votessafeamerica's work has been able to continue because of the people who listen to this podcast. So I want to say thank you for that. And if you are in a space to donate a little bit more and through our anxiety relief program, which is a monthly recurring donation program, it really will help us in getting this work done. And if you don't have the resources to do that, your time and attention is just important. So if you go to votesafeamerica.com, you can find all the ways to get involved. Excellent. Well, thank you for all the work you're doing. Thanks to everybody out there who has donated, volunteered, gotten involved in some way, talked to their friends about politics. Just try to encourage people to care. We got to have some hope people. Yes. This now is our moment. These midterms, not going to everything. I feel like they're going to do it. Yeah. And it's step one to 2020. Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah. We got to get some momentum and some wind at our back. And then we're going right into 2028. Shiniko, great to see you. Yeah. Thanks for all the work and talk to you. Yeah. Bye. Thanks to Shiniko for coming on the pod. And thanks to all of you for submitting your questions as a reminder, you can find a volunteer opportunity near you or donate to the fun to defeat the cricket dozen at votesafeamerica.com. Dan and I will be back with a new show in your feeds on Friday. Bye everyone. Pods in America is a cricket media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts and Ferris Safari with Reed Charlene, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heffco, Jordan Cancer, Charlotte Landis, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's Guild of America East. I'm Nate Silver. I'm Galen Drook. We're back. This time with our friends at Crooked Media for a new show called Still Counting. Yeah. Numbers are hard. Take so easy. Subscribe to Still Counting on YouTube.com/at Still Counting Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.